The present invention relates to an electronic commerce system and handling of information in the electronic commerce system, and particularly to a suitable electronic commerce system using a combination of a transaction device and a portable information recording medium such as an IC card, or the like, to perform a commercial transaction and a method for providing commodity (item) information in the electronic commerce system.
At present, with respect to an insurance commodity which is one of commodities such as monetary commodities, it is general that a salesman suggests an insurance commodity to a customer uniformly by intuition and experience of the salesman. In the sales action, customer information (name, address, event, life cycle, etc.) is first collected by means of conversation, questionnairing, or the like. The collected customer information is inputted into a terminal in an insurance company to thereby generate an insurance plan. The salesman proposes an insurance commodity while explaining the contents of the plan generated correspondingly to the schedule of meeting the customer.
In an instance described on pages 15 to 16 in "Insurance: Life-insurance Version", No. 3686, published by Insurance Research Institute Co., Ltd. on Jan. 11, 1996, a salesman is made to carry a terminal which is a combination of a portable telephone and a notebook type personal computer so that the salesman can perform, on site, both inputting of customer information and generation of an insurance plan. In an instance described on page 59 of "NIKKEI MONEY" published by Nikkei Home Publishing Inc. on Nov. 1, 1996, a customer per se can send personal information such as address, name, date of birth, policy number, content of consultation, etc. by electronic mail so that the customer can receive service of consultation of an insurance and generation of an insurance plan. Incidentally, in an agency, an insurance commodity is proposed in the timing of sailing of a commodity as an occupation so that the proposal can be connected to a contract.